AN INVESTIGATION OF EGOGRAMS IN RELATION TO SELF, OCCUPATIONS, PRIMARY HOLLAND CODES AND OCCUPATIONAL PREFERENCE (TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS, EGO STATES)

The current exploratory study employed 20 expert subjects possessing knowledge of both career development and Holland's typology (Holland, 1985) to examine the relationship of egograms in transactional analysis (Dusay, 1977) to occupations, Holland codes, and occupational preference.Results indicated that all occupations as well as primary Holland types were represented by distinct egograms whose tested level of significance on a nonparametric ANOVA for related measures, the Friedman test, obtained at (LESSTHEQ).05 in every case. A test of multiple comparisons between ego states at an experimentwise error rate of .05 was usually significant in at least 1/2 of the 10 possible pairwise comparisons per egogram for a majority of occupations or Holland types in the study.Also investigated was the relationship of congruence between egograms of self and occupations (index of agreement) with regard to occupational preference ranking of the 18 occupations used in the study. Here, results correlating the index of agreement with occupational preference yielded inconsistent results. While the mean obtained correlation was not significant at the .05 level, 6 of the 20 individual coefficients were and represented negative as well as positive values.Finally, a simple mathematical model for generating egograms from three letter Holland codes was examined. This was tested through attempts to predict egograms generated for the 18 occupations used in the study from a weighted combination of egograms based on their three letter Holland codes. A binomial probability calculation for the results obtained was significant at (LESSTHEQ).05 level. The average median difference between actual and predicted ranks for all ego states was less than 3/4 of a rank for occupations in the study.One purpose of the research was to investigate egograms generated for 18 conceptually different occupations by having subjects complete the Adjective Check List: Transactional Analysis Scales (Gough & Heilbrun, 1983) for each occupation. Another was to explore egograms of the primary Holland types via the Adjective Check List.